The Second Time Around

The second pregnancy is different. Some things are the same: I’m still referred to as the happy, pregnant woman, I’ve still never had morning sickness, I still didnt have to shop for maternity clothes(thanks Amy). God has seen fit to bless me with easy, wonderful pregnancies both times, and I am so very grateful for that. The difference this time is more in how we’ve prepared for Sammy’s arrival, or not prepared.

With Wren we had four showers and the child had more clothes than Dennis and I combined before she was born. We spent $500 on a crib that has now become a glorified doll holder since we co-sleep. We took natural birthing classes for eight weeks. During the first pregnancy, we had time to do these things because we didn’t have a child yet.

Yesterday I bought Sammy clothes. This puts him up to a total of six pairs, more than enough I say until we see if he actually needs the newborn or zero to three months size. Sammy is getting a bassinet from my sister that she received from a friend because we know another $500 crib would be empty anyway since he will be in our room for night feedings and, when he’s big enough, our bed. We haven’t even been able to squeeze in a refresher course for our birthing class, but thankfully our birthing coach from last time has offered to doula if we need her. Between that and reading our birthing book from last time, we’re considering ourselves ready to go.

It’s not that we care less about this pregnancy or this child; it’s just a more mellow attitude the second time around. Sleep deprivation? Been there, done that. Putting together a nursery my child spends no time in because she’s attached to us all the time, which I love? Did that too. I have friends who decorate for fun, but I decorate because people walk in my house and think we’ve lived there for two weeks instead of over two years. It does not rank high on my priority list. If I thought Sammy would be in his nursery a lot, we’d be working on turning the office into a nursery a little bit faster. I know where he’ll be though; attached to me nursing or riding in his baby sling so he can hear my heart and get acclimated to the outside the womb world in his own time.

This time around, I want no showers. Wren’s clothes are now separated into three bins: two are full of clothes that still don’t fit and one is full of clothes she outgrew before the tags came off. I’ve already given away two bins of never worn clothes. When Sammy is given toys, we will have to start using our kitchen cabinets as storage space because Wren’s are already flowing freely out of her room and to every other corner of our house. Plus, most of Wren’s are unisex, so Sammy will have his fair share of toys just waiting. Dennis and I feel like we’ve hit the jackpot because my school has offered us diapers and wipes in leiu of cake and punch, and being second timers, we know how awesome this offer is!

I think for us it comes down to seeing our reality. Despite the fact that Wren has been showered with material possessions, and I’m sure Sammy will be too, it’s not what means the most to her. We mean the most to her. Our time spent working on puzzles, reading books, chasing her around the house, going to the park, is all she really wants. It may just be that she is too young, but so far she has never attempted to take a toy she likes from the store. She plays with it at the store, puts it on a shelf and walks out with nothing more than mine or Dennis’ hand and never throws a fit about it. If we were to detach her room from the rest of the house, I think she would honestly care less. As long as dad’s there to play and I’m there to sing, she might not even notice.

Our reality looks different than I expected because I was more of a boundaries person before we had kids. I thought there would be places in our house that were off limits or grown ups only. I cannot imagine it being like that now. Somewhere in between feeding a child from my body, watching her sleep, and obsessing if her temperature was 99 instead of 98.6, I lost all boundaries. I am like one liquid woman who feels connected and flowing through every member of our house. It’s amazing. Dennis and I were watching her sleep last night and he said he couldn’t imagine her not sleeping in our bed. Me either, and I know the time will come when she doesn’t want to.

I don’t want Sammy to feel like the hands me down baby or like we didn’t care enough to do all the first baby things with him. It’s not that way at all. Like I said, it’s just a mind set difference and the fact that we were so overly prepared with Wren that we can still use what we have to avoid being wasteful. Sammy and Wren are already distinct, unique, perfect little beings on their own, and any difference in how we prepare for them is not a reflection of our love. It’s just us meeting their needs. Every child is different. You don’t prepare for them or raise them exactly the same. It doesn’t mean you love one more than the other or expect more or less from one than the other. It means you are looking at them as individuals and making your decisions accordingly instead of adopting the one-size-fits-all version of parenting. Though I’m sure we’re destined to make mistakes everyday, I am comfortable with where we are now and how we got here. And I can say this: the excitement of adding another person to our family is just as awesome the second time around.

Rubber Ducky, You’re the One

I tired of the idea of multitasking months ago. Honestly, I believe that I can have 10 things on my to-do list and I will get them done faster if I work on one at a time, not five at the same time. What I finish is actually quality, and I’m not losing my mind trying to juggle returning a phone call while answering email and cooking dinner at the same time. I usually end up emailing the wrong person while not listening to the person on the phone and burning dinner. It’s not quality.

Apparently I even need to stop multitasking on some of the tasks that should be somewhat intuitive, at least while I’m pregnant. This realization came courtesy of an unfortunate bathtub incident on Sunday. I was running bath water, stepping in the bath water while having a conversation with my husband and trying to reach for my daughter who wanted in the bath with me when it happened: I was violated by a rubber ducky! Wren has about six rubber duckies, so I’m not completely sure who the culprit was, but I sat my tush on a ducky beak, flung my whole body backwards and sat in shock. Luckily, this fall did not lead to contractions and an emergency room visit, though it did lead to some laughs from husband and daughter.

It was amusing, but it did bring back the thought that multitasking is a myth. The brain needs to focus on one thing at a time to truly comprehend. It’s safer(that’s a shout out to all you crazies who text while you drive) and I feel healthier when I’m not doing the chicken-with-my-head-cut-off dance. It took me a long time to realize the root of my disorganization was just my tendency to take on too much and not prioritize what needed to be done first. Even if I could get it prioritized, I still never felt like doing one thing at a time was good enough, like I was cheating because I wasn’t 100% stressed and ready to scream. Luckily, I’m over that feeling.

I have to credit one huge change in our lives that has helped me eliminate the need for multitasking and that is pretty much doing away with our cell phones. I know, this is blasphemy for most people, but it is absolute bliss! We installed a home phone in June, went on a prepaid plan where we have so few minutes a month available that it has to pretty much be emergency only and life became much simpler. Here’s why:

People can’t find you, therefore they stop looking:
I remember when my phone would ring and it always seemed like I had to answer it. There was a sense of emergency revolving around the fact that someone was calling me right then and what if they needed something. Even if I didn’t answer, I had their voice message or text just waiting and this lent a feeling of needing to respond when a need wasn’t really there. Now, people call my cell, it’s usually off or not with me, and then they call the home phone if they really need something. I check the home phone at the end of the day and call back who I want when I want. And when people don’t really need anything, they stop calling and this frees up a ton of time you spend calling them back just to find out they only called you because they were bored.

Relationships are better when they’re not casual:
Speaking of people who call when they’re bored, don’t you just love the people who call because you’re their from here to there person? You know, that person they call on the way to the grocery store or to pick up their kids? They don’t need to talk to you, maybe don’t even want to, but they are so used to doing something all the time that sitting in the car in silence or with only the radio freaks them out. They call you, fake interest until they reach their destination, and then you don’t hear from them again until they are going somewhere else and happen to see your number in their phone. Yeah, these aren’t quality conversations. I am now a fan of the old school style phone conversations that involve putting my child to bed, getting something warm to drink and having a conversation with a person where this is no predestined time for it to end. Those are good, and honestly, I don’t have as many phone conversations as I did before giving up the cell, but they’re better when I do.

Texting…I just don’t have words:
I hate it. I am not a technology hater, but I hate texting. I realize this confession will make me unpopular with 99% of the population, but I'm ready to be honest. I hate it because 8th graders think you spell you as u, and cause as cuz, and they get seriously offended when this is not accepted on a formal paper in my class. I hate it because on a regular basis I am having conversations with people who then pull out their cell phones and respond to a text from someone else. By the way, this is not multitasking, it’s just rude. Really, if I bore you that much then just walk away. It would be less irritating. I hate it because by the time I type out one text, I could have called and said what I needed to say therefore making it a huge time waster. I just hate it.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the night. Rubber ducky bum violation = bad. More time with family doing one thing at a time and not living glued to a cell phone = good.

Meshing

We are in the middle of ear infection hell. Allergic to pretty much any effective antibiotic on the market, Wren has had the same ear infection for 10 days and the only change is it is now in both ears instead of just the one it originally started in. Not exactly the progress we were hoping for.

I realize in the grand scheme of things this is not the end of the world, but it has thrown ours slightly off balance this weekend. We now have to see an ENT to check for hearing loss, our regular pediatrician to start food allergy testing so we can pinpoint why a child who has never had strep, a respiratory infection or any other illness cannot shake ear infections, and we have to honestly consider the possibility of tubes despite how hard we have fought it for 20 months.

In the midst of this, I saw why Dennis and I balance each other out so well. This morning, a Sunday no less, when Wren was screaming, grabbing both ears and on the verge of hyperventilation, I was torn up inside. Dennis was too, but I think he handled it better. I didn’t handle it well because it was the waiting period. Wait for an emergency care center to open, wait to see what they say, wait to see what our pediatrician on call will say about what the emergency care center person said, and on and on and on. I don’t wait well. Dennis does. But the tables turned when I spoke to our pediatrician and we started making a plan. Within minutes I looked up all the ENTs she recommended, including their age, number of children, office hours, and the mood and temperament of their office staff. I had phone numbers listed, stats and risk on procedures documented and a slew of questions written in my spiral. I was armed. The illusion of control was intoxicating. Waiting was over. When phones are turned on in the morning, I will strike with a vengeance. By this point, Dennis was the lump of a mess I had been hours before.

It’s not that he wasn’t ready to act. He knows the food testing, poo collecting, and hearing test are all necessary to try to continue to avoid tubes but also figure out if there is any other viable option. It’s just that his mind went a different way than mine: are they going to puncture her eardrum this week to test the junk inside? How do they food allergy test? Is the new antibiotic she’s on going to cause her to be sick(diarrhea was pretty much guaranteed, so fun for the week we collect poo!)? How traumatized is she going to be after a week of probing, testing, and feeling sick?

All of this had crossed my mind and still does, but I saw it as doing something, a means to an end that will hopefully include the end of all ear infections forever. Yes, it will be a messy week or month or whatever, but we’re moving. I’m the person who would rather be going 10 miles an hour in slow traffic than just sitting even if it means I have to do the whole stop and start thing constantly. I like to measure progress. Maybe it just means I’m not patient.

Either way, I expect it’s going to take both of our personalities to weather whatever the ear future holds. Whenever one of us struggles, the other just seems to be okay or at least functional at that moment. It’s a nice balance in a situation that seems to have no balance right now. But I am afraid it may prove what I already feared: I haven’t learned much about patience. That illusion of control still appeals to me a little too much. Then again, I found an Indian proverb that says “Call on God, but row away from the rocks.” Maybe I’m the rower. While Dennis sits patiently in the boat seeking guidance, maybe I’m the one who feels better with paddles in both hands, praying but using what little skill I have to row. I don’t know. I’ll pray, I’ll row, and somehow, we’ll hopefully land in a place that doesn’t involve ear infections, allergic reactions, or words like poo and collecting lumped together.

A year and two sizes later

Trying to convince my husband that buying panties while pregnant is not a good idea has failed the last couple of months, so I took some of the birthday cash I received and decided to surprise him. He had a final in college on Thursday, and I thought it would be perfect if he came home and could see my new undies in the Victoria’s Secret bag since he has been complaining that I’ve had the old ones too long. I overcame the voice in my head that kept saying, “Do not buy panties while pregnant, do not look at your butt while pregnant, none of this is smart.” The lesson learned from this is always listen to the voice.

Wren and I set out on my 31st birthday and had a pretty good first trip to Victoria’s Secret. I picked out undies, she put some on her head and roamed around, and we were out of there in under ten minutes. It wasn’t until she was napping that I decided to try on my new purchases. I wasn’t expecting any major surprises; I had purchased the same size I always wore. There was a surprise waiting when I put them on though: they disappeared. That’s right, my pregnant butt ate them! Now I have been trying to tell Dennis that with this pregnancy my butt has also become pregnant, but in his always supportive way he says that it’s not true and I’m just being paranoid. The panty eating butt incident is proof.

I didn’t get too upset. I mean, I knew my other ones were a little snug and you can only blame that on too many trips through the dryer for so long. So, Wren and I trudged back to Victoria’s Secret to trade them in, something you can do if you’ve tried them on over underwear and they are not “obviously worn”. Who tries to return obviously worn panties I wonder, but, I digress. This second trip was a little different. Wren tried to use a bra as a slingshot and actually got her arms tangled up in some bright orange panties. However, she was distracted and happy, her slingshot aim wasn’t great so no one got hurt, and it gave me some time to stop and really think about my butt size and what would fit over my newfound ten pounds of cellulite. I decided to go up a size. That’s right, one size. I even consulted a 17 year old, size 0 sales associate before making this decision. Her advice: “Maybe you can just buy what you think you will need after the baby comes, you know, when everything falls back into place. By the way, get the ones with the lace at the top because those will stretch while your belly is still stretching.”
And yes, this individual is still alive. I was even so full of the love of Christ that day that I didn’t bother to shatter her no body fat world by telling her that things don’t fall back into place after you have a child, they just fall. You try to catch them with underwire and big butt cheek covering panties. I just smiled and resisted the urge to tell Wren to aim the bra slingshot at her.

So, we left. Why did I not try them on at the store, you ask? We were running startlingly close to bedtime, something I don’t usually do, and locking Wren in a small room with me while I tried to analyze the amount of butt coverage this size offered just didn’t seem wise. Besides, I went up a size. That should be good, right?

Well, the birthday panty plan failed. When Dennis came home all he found was a wife who had tried on five more pairs of panties that didn’t fit(one actually cut off circulation to my thighs) and was trying desperately not to blame him for the fact that I now know EXACTLY how much bigger my butt is. He had good intentions. And really, I love my pregnancy body, I loved it the whole pregnancy with Wren. This pregnancy has been no different until now, and I finally know the difference: I never looked at myself from the waist down before when I was pregnant. I definitely was not stupid enough to look at myself in a full length mirror wearing nothing but underwear. Am I getting dumber with each pregnancy?

I still love my pregnancy body, most of it, and I don’t feel 31, whatever that is supposed to feel like. This experience showed me that I have matured, and I don’t just mean put on weight. This experience five years ago would have led to tears for most of the day. Now, Wren and I laughed, put panties on our heads and called it a day. My body makes babies and milk, so I think that makes up for my bottom being a bit on the J. Lo side right now. I don’t want to teach my daughter that panty size is a defining factor for self esteem. Plus, I did realize that I’ve been letting some things slide, important things that I need to address soon. If I am going to push a child out of my body without drugs in less than four months, I need to start getting my body ready for that. I wouldn’t sign up for a marathon without practicing my running, so I don’t think I should enter labor in the not so wonderful shape I’m in now. And that’s when I realized I’m more concerned about my health than my clothes size, more concerned about keeping my body in a healthful condition than having no cellulite. Don't get me wrong, rock hard legs like I had when I spent the better part of my day exercising would be nice, but that's not my long term goal, even after the cellulite shock. I want to teach my children to focus on health, not numbers on the scale or sizes on clothes because I think when your focus is right the rest of it just falls into place. That was my a-ha moment: after 31 years, I have finally discovered how to put on my big girl panties(literally) and be the example I want my children to see. I won’t just be saying it, I’m going to live it. And really, only 31 years to learn. I’m a pretty quick study.

Great and Real Expectations

Baby Alive farted today. This may not sound eventful, but it was actually kind of scary to see and hear a doll with such life like features fart and then scream “hug me” repeatedly for 20 minutes. Wren started freaking out a little and I thought about putting a pillow over Baby Alive’s head to muffle the sound. However, I had visions of Wren in a few months trying to quite Sammy’s cries with a pillow to the face and thought better of it. That would totally be my fault. So we just laid her on the bed and let her freak out until she closed her huge eyes and fell into a peaceful slumber.

Baby Alive was only acting this way because her batteries are low. She’s usually polite, not too demanding, one of Wren’s favorites. It was a great visual demonstration of what can happen when our batteries get low. It was also a freaky reminder of that Chucky movie from when I was a kid.

It’s easy for me to forget the tired, run down times when I’m not tired or run down. Right now, I feel so alive and like I’m accomplishing so much. Wren and I have our summer schedule pretty ironed out, the house is generally in some kind of order, and I feel completely rested. Dennis is about to embark on his last semester of college before receiving his Bachelors in December. It’s good. The second trimester rocks. And though it’s not easy thinking about taking Wren back to daycare, I feel like we could be on the cusp of life changes that will eventually eliminate that need and allow us to grow our family even more. I’m not looking forward to returning to work, but I am working hard on doing it with the enthusiasm my students deserve. Plus, I have maternity leave just around the corner.

There have been days in the last two weeks when things have fallen so beautifully into place that I actually felt like I should be wearing a Suzy Homemaker tiara and sash. However, I have to remember that there will be days I want to toss the tiara and hang myself with the sash, days that dinner isn’t hot and on the table at six, days that my house is not clean and I am not functioning on eight full hours of sleep. There will be days I’ve been locked in a room with 75 eighth graders and all their attitudes, and I will want to scream. I can’t wait to meet Sammy, but I know that I’m going to be a Jersey cow for the better part of the first two years of his life, and I’ll be trying to sleep and keep up with a two year old the rest of the time. I remember the first few months with Wren as a newborn as some of the most beautiful moments of my life. I didn’t care that nothing was clean, that I pretty much just served as a milking machine-in fact breast feeding was one of my favorite parts and I’m sure will be again-, and that we only ate because people from our church brought us food. I knew I was accomplishing the most important task by just being with my child and not being anal about everything else. I know it will be that way with Sammy too, but I also know I won’t be napping when he naps unless Wren happens to be napping too. I know we’ll be doing play dates for Wren so she’s not bored instead of just laying in the recliner semi-unconscious together. And I am looking forward to balancing both. However, I know one thing my daughter and I for sure have in common: if not well rested and well fed, we are beast. We are Baby Alive farting and begging for love and not wanting to be hugged when someone finally does approach us. We’re nuts. And I do anticipate the double or triple or more sleep deprivation that comes with having two children instead of just one. So I’m trying to recharge now, rest, cook, play, and just take it one day at a time. I figure if I get into the habit of this it will be easier to accomplish when I am run down with low batteries.

I will not set unrealistic expectations. When Sammy is born and I am chasing one child and constantly feeding the other, I will not scrub toilets, cook if I’m exhausted and need a nap, try to pretend I have it all under control. I will laugh and enjoy every moment and remember that at some point I will be able to clean with my two little helpers beside me, return phone calls, sleep through the night. Every moment with them is so unique and fleeting. I won’t miss them because I’m worried about doing something else. Even when my battery is low, I will bask in the happiness of the moment and remember that real grown up junk is always going to be around for me to do. Little ones grow too fast.

Should my plan of just letting go and not stressing fail and you find me having a Baby Alive like tantrum, please don’t put a pillow over my face. Just cover me up with a blanket and let me nap. That’s probably all I’ll need anyway.

They’re just not that into me

Well, I finally heard back from a job I was interested in. Let me clarify: I didn’t hear back. I stalked their office line dumping my story on the first poor soul who answered the line and was told what I think I figured out weeks ago. If they were interested in me, they would have called, they’ve started and almost finished filling the positions I applied for, and that email they went to the trouble to send saying I would hear from them by phone or email soon was, well, not true. Plus, they haven’t taken the jobs off their site to show they have been filled because then they wouldn’t get calls from girls like me, and who doesn’t want to hear from me? I did have the privilege of leaving another message for HR, a different woman than the first two who never returned my calls, just to verify that my resume is somewhere in a shred pile. I was told to leave a voicemail, but she’s a very busy lady. Apparently it’s busy work hiring people who aren’t me.

I’m not upset about being passed over for the job. Honestly, I was qualified. You could compare everything they asked for with my resume and I fit the bill completely. However, I’m sure about a thousand more applicants did as well. My issue is with the lack of any kind of follow up. I get it; if 10,000 people apply for a job, all of them will not be called and told they’re not needed. However, when you send communication over a two to three month period that says you will hear back, that’s another story. I have emails that say I will be contacted. If you’re going to go to the trouble to send an email, here’s one I’d like to see:

Dear Applicant:

We will contact you by phone or email if we are remotely interested in your skills. For the rest of you, if we don’t contact you by such and such date, you are never going to hear from us. Your resume has been shredded. You are either under or over qualified, don’t have exactly what we want, or the font on your resume gave us nausea. Better luck next time.

Sincerely,
HR

It’s honest. I could so get on board for a company like that. The band aid rip pain that would occur from such an email and never being contacted again would be so much quicker than the months of false hope offered by one line that was never meant to be taken literally. “We’ll call you…yeah right.”

The good news is this didn’t ruin my day. It actually didn’t even interfere with five minutes of my day unless you include the time I spent calling, being rejected, and leaving a voicemail. I think I’m growing a little, even slowly. I read a quote somewhere about God punishing us by giving us what we pray for. I’ll try to find it because it’s much more eloquent than my short version, but it basically says that if God really wants to punish you, He’ll give you what you think you want instead of what He has planned. This must not have been part of the plan. I’ve been blessed by unanswered prayers before, or prayers that were answered with a resounding no. I’m pretty sure I prayed to marry my first boyfriend. Nice guy, but he’s not Dennis who is my puzzle piece and father to Wren and Sammy. I am glad that one was a no. I’m sure I’ve prayed for a lot of things that have not come to fruition, and maybe I should remember to thank God for that. In my mind this was the perfect job. In reality, it may have been a nightmare. Or maybe I’m meant to work for this company at another time in my life. Whatever the case, I like answers. I can handle nos. I can handle the fact that I will not be what every person or company wants. Just tell me. I’m not good at reading between the lines. The only time I try to guess at what someone is thinking is when I ask my daughter if she needs to go poopy and she doesn’t answer one way or the other. Then I watch for signs. Even then, I’m wrong 50% of the time. I wish she’d just say yes or no or her famous, “oh, poop”.

Plus, I have a job I’m going back to in August. Though I don’t even allow myself to think about the pain of the daycare drop off again, it’s a job I love with people I like. I know how lucky I am to have it when almost everyone we know has been affected by lay offs at some point over the last couple of years. We’re just trying to future plan for when I will need to be home to homeschool the kids and still bring in income so we can both retire comfortably and our kids can go to college. And other opportunities have shown themselves in the last couple of weeks. It may not be the thunderbolt, arrow pointing confirmation I was hoping for, but I think we’re heading in the right direction.

Mission (sort of) Accomplished

Our only real goal for the weekend was shoes. Dennis needs another pair of brown work shoes, but due to his weird, wide feet, finding shoes in his size is a nightmare. However, the brown work shoes are dead. They cannot be revived. I’m embarrassed he’s worn them this long.

We left the house this afternoon with that one mission in mind. Our schedule was already off because we missed church due to Wren’s very odd sleeping schedule lately. She won’t nap until three and goes to bed at a decent time at night, but she can’t stay in a deep sleep for more than three or four hours. This is a new, exhausting development and we’re all struggling because of it. I guess I did get what I asked for a few weeks ago when I wished she would stop waking up at six am. Now that she can’t sleep at night, I get a couple of extra hours of sleep in the morning. However, it’s more exhausting than before because the night is so restless. Just more proof that God has a great sense of humor and isn’t afraid to show it.

Anyway, we just needed shoes and knew she wasn’t napping anytime soon. Our first stop did not render satisfactory results, so we decided to go the mall and look there. Plus, Wren could roam around and hopefully get tired enough to nap. We walked the mall, hit up all the sample trays because it’s a great way to eat unhealthy foods in small quantities so you can convince yourself they don’t count, and rode the carousel. Watching the ice skaters took up almost half an hour, then we left. Wren fell asleep in the car with food in both hands and slept for two hours.

As Dennis and I cooked dinner, we marveled at how easy that nap had gone and how maybe we were pulling out of this crazy sleep phase. It only occurred to us an hour after coming home from the mall that we had no brown work shoes. In fact, we did not even enter a store in the mall to look for shoes. We became so preoccupied with just marveling at our daughter’s every move that the reason we left the house completely escaped us. Technically, I guess this means we did not accomplish our mission, but I still feel a sort of accomplishment. I never want all the things on the to-do list to get in the way of a really good day, the kind that has no agenda and no goal. This wasn’t supposed to be one of those days, but I’m glad it turned into one. Unfortunately, that makes some other day this week find shoes day. God bless the weird, wide feet.